Browsing by Person "Baillot, Helen"

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‘At some points you feel awful because you are going to start again’: The ambiguous role of education in highly skilled refugee women’s integration experiences
(SAGE, 2024-09-25) Baillot, Helen; Fernandes, Marcus
In refugee and migration studies, education has been situated as both a marker of integration and a facilitator of progress in other domains. This paper draws on the accounts of three highly skilled women who have experienced forced migration to highlight some of the ambiguities of education’s role in pathways to social and economic inclusion. A case study approach allows for a detailed and contextual exploration of how intersections of age, caring responsibilities and immigration status influence women’s ability to engage with education. Participants’ accounts confirm that accessing desired and appropriate educational provision can propel people towards their longer-term goals. However, provision that is inaccessible or perceived to be below women’s skill levels can be experienced as exclusionary and demoralising, with attendant impact on women’s perceptions of integration and hopes for the future. Women deploy several strategies to overcome these obstacles, including leveraging existing social connections and re-evaluating their future career pathways. Yet these strategies are not always fully successful. Our findings point towards the need for improved provision for adult refugees and a concerted effort by educational institutions to tackle continuing systemic barriers to education.
Building an ethical research culture: Scholars of refugee background researching refugee-related issues
(Oxford University Press, 2024-03-25) Albtran, Ahmad; Aksu, Pinar; Al-Fakir, Zuhair; Al-Hashimi, Heidar; Baillot, Helen; Izzeddin, Azad; Johannes, Hyab; Kirkwood, Steve; Mfaco, Bulelani; Nicole, Tandy; Ní Raghallaigh, Muireann; Ogutu, Gordon; O’Reilly, Zoë; Younes, Angham
Recent scholarship on the need to decolonize refugee research, and migration research more generally, points to the urgency of challenging ongoing colonial power structures inherent in such research. Increased involvement of scholars with lived experience is one way to challenge and remake unequal and colonial power relations. Through discussions with researchers of forced migration, we aimed to explore the challenges, barriers, and supports related to involvement in such research, and to identify how research practices and structures could be improved to increase and facilitate the involvement of scholars with refugee backgrounds. In this field reflection, we highlight key points and suggestions for better research practice that emerged from these discussions. In doing so, we are endeavouring to contribute to the important ongoing conversation about ethics and decolonizing research. We build on existing ethical guidelines by opening up some of the complexities of ethical practice and offering concrete actions that can be taken to work through these.
Care as Resistance, Care as Agency, Care as a Burden: A Relational Exploration of the Impact of Giving and Receiving Care on Refugees’ Lives
(Oxford University Press, 2025-09-23) Baillot, Helen; Vera Espinoza, Marcia; Yurdakul, G.; Beaman, J.; Mügge, L.; Scuzzarello, S.; Sunanta, S.
This chapter discusses the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of care and its impact upon refugees’ pathways toward inclusion. Drawing on qualitative data collected during workshops and interviews with 55 recently recognized refugees in Scotland, the chapter explores how care in multiple forms is experienced, given, and negotiated. The chapter draws from ideas around care that conceptualize it as a means to resist restrictive government policies, as an expression of agency within familial and social contexts, and as a burden that affects people differentially as they seek to rebuild lives in new country contexts. In exploring the multiple dimensions and directions of care and the ways it intersects with gender and immigration status, among other social locations, we highlight conceptual and empirical parallels between care and integration. One, the text suggests, should not be understood without full consideration of the other. The chapter concludes by calling for care to be accorded a greater importance in explorations of refugees’ integration experiences, in ways that fully encompass care’s potentialities and limitations for the people who provide and receive it.
Cricket and Afghan Integration in Scotland: A Case Study
(Queen Margaret University; University of Stirling; the British Academy, 2024-09) Baillot, Helen; Connolly, Michael; Grant, Maggie; Palombo, Gianluca; Shah, Hijab; Taylor, Kieran
This briefing shares findings from a British Academy funded research project conducted in the North and North-East of Scotland. The research examined the way in which cricket has served as a vehicle for the integration of young people from Afghanistan in Scotland. We spoke with cricket club members, local authority representatives and third sector practitioners to build a picture of Afghan young people’s involvement in grassroots cricket. We sought to understand how sport can contribute to processes of integration that involve refugee people and other members of receiving communities.
FAMILIES OF CARE AND CONNECTION: A RELATIONAL EXPLORATION OF HOW REFUGEES NAVIGATE STRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS TO INTEGRATION IN THE UK: A critical appraisal submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD by Publication (Retrospective)
(Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2025-10) Baillot, Helen
Drawing on data from three inter-related studies, the four papers considered in this critical appraisal foreground the role played by social connections – relationships with other people, organisations and statutory bodies – in integration. My central argument is that family and family-like relationships are critical to refugees’ experiences of navigating new systems and structures in countries of settlement. These relationships are defined, developed and sustained through practices of care. I therefore position both care and family as central vectors in integration and as sites where refugees are agentive decision-makers shaping their own integration trajectories. Empirically I call for researchers and practitioners to move away from individualistic notions of integration to fully incorporate the family and the care that flows through family-like relationships into the design and delivery of research and practice. Conceptually, I outline the ways in which this process of incorporation moves us away from integration and towards an alternative feminist post-migration ecological framework, within which orientations and practices of care play a crucial role.
Forced migration and sexual and gender-based violence: findings from the SEREDA project in Scotland
(University of Birmingham, 2022) Phillimore, Jenny; Jamal, Zeina; Noubani, Aya; Hourani, Jeanine; Baillot, Helen
Forced migration is gendered with men and women experiencing displacement in different ways and nearly half of the world’s forced migrants being women and children. All forced migrants are vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) which includes any form of violence whether physical, emotional, sexual, structural or symbolic which is inflicted on the basis of socially ascribed gender roles. However, women and children are most vulnerable to SGBV. The SEREDA project sought to understand the nature and incidence of SGBV experienced by forced migrants residing in countries of refuge. This report outlines the findings of SEREDA interviews in Scotland focusing on the Scottish policy context and how SGBV survivors might be better protected and supported within this context.
From Acts of Care to Practice-Based Resistance: Refugee-Sector Service Provision and Its Impact(s) on Integration
(MDPI, 2023-01-11) Käkelä, Emmaleena; Baillot, Helen; Kerlaff, Leyla; Vera Espinoza, Marcia
The UK refugee sector encompasses welfare provision, systems advocacy, capacity development and research. However, to date there has been little attention on refugees’ experiences of the support provided by these services or on the views of the practitioners who deliver them. This paper draws from interviews and workshops with thirty refugee beneficiaries of an integration service in Scotland and twenty practitioners to shed light on how refugees and practitioners perceive and provide meaning to the work of the refugee sector. We identify refugee sector organisations as crucial nodes in refugees’ social networks and explore the multiple roles they play in the integration process. Firstly, we confirm that refugee organisations act as connectors, linking refugees with wider networks of support. Secondly, we demonstrate that the work of the refugee sector involves acts of care that are of intrinsic value to refugees, over and above the achievement of tangible integration outcomes. Finally, we demonstrate that this care also involves acts that seek to overcome and subvert statutory system barriers. We propose to understand these acts as forms of “practice-based resistance” necessitated by a hostile policy environment. The findings expand on understandings of the refugee sector, its role in integration and the multi-faceted nature of integration processes.
“I just try my best to make them happy”: the role of intra-familial relationships of care in the integration of reunited refugee families
(Frontiers Media S.A., 2023-09-27) Baillot, Helen
Migration through managed routes such as spousal and work visas has been conceptualized as being a pragmatic choice driven by the needs of families rather than individuals. In contrast, studies of refugee integration post-migration have tended to analyse integration processes through the perspective of the individual rather than through a family lens. Drawing from data collection using a social connections mapping tool methodology with recently reunited refugee families supported by a third sector integration service in the UK, in this paper the author makes a valuable contribution to addressing this theoretical gap. The author explores the ambivalent ways in which family relationships, and the care that flows between family members, influence emotional, and practical aspects of refugees' integration. Empirically the inclusion of accounts from people occupying different positions within their families, including from children, adds depth to our understanding of integration from a refugee perspective. Conceptually, the paper argues that a focus on familial relationships of care re-positions refugees not as passive recipients of care, but active and agentive subjects who offer care to others. The paper ends with a call for integration to be understood in a family way that fully encompasses the opportunities and limitations offered by familial care.
'I want to participate.' Transition experiences of new refugees in Glasgow
(Taylor & Francis, 2017-08-16) Strang, Alison; Baillot, Helen; Mignard, Elodie
The particular case of transition from the uncertain position of an asylum seeker to a refugee with statutory rights is used to explore the interaction of structure and agency in refugees' lived experience of integration in super-diversity. Analysis draws on data generated through the 'Holistic Integration Service', available to all new refugees in Scotland from 2013 to 2016. Case data from 1885 households, interviews (n-=-24) and focus groups with refugees and service providers (n-=-13) showed that refugees' desire to be independent was thwarted by inaccessible systems that were insensitive to language and cultural barriers, and the cumulative demands of transition. The transition experiences of living in hostels and B&B accommodation; racism; poverty and disruption of social networks undermined effective integration. Evidence suggests that the experiences of transition disrupt settlement and disempower refugees creating a dependency on cultural mediation and advocacy for access to statutory rights and services. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Insights into integration pathways: new Scots and the Holisitic Integration Service
(Scottish Refugee Council, 2015-06) Strang, Alison; Baillot, Helen; Mignard, Elodie
Evaluation report of year two of the Holistic Integration Service, offering up to twelve months support to people who have been granted Refugee Status, Humanitarian Protection, or Discretionary Leave to Remain following an asylum claim in Scotland.
Pathways and Potentialities: the role of social connections in the integration of reunited refugee families
(Queen Margaret University, 2020) Baillot, Helen; Kerlaff, Leyla; Dakessian, Arek; Strang, Alison
The Role of Social Connections in Refugees’ Pathways to Social and Economic Inclusion: Research Report 2020-2022
(Queen Margaret University, 2023) Baillot, Helen; Kerlaff, Leyla; Käkelä, Emmaleena; Vera Espinoza, Marcia
The role of social connections in refugees’ pathways towards socio-economic integration
(University of Oxford, 2023-01) Vera Espinoza, Marcia; Baillot, Helen; Käkelä, Emmaleena; Dakessian, Arek; Kerlaff, Leyla
Social connections are well recognised as contributing to integration. Research undertaken in Scotland offers useful, sometimes counter-intuitive insights into their role over time, plus learnings that could be explored in other contexts.
The Role of Social Connections, Time and Place in Refugees’ Pathways to Inclusion: Final Report 2020 - 2023
(Queen Margaret University, 2023-12) Kerlaff, Leyla; Baillot, Helen; Palombo, Gianluca; Fernandes, Marcus; Vera Espinoza, Marcia
his report outlines overall findings from the ABM3 New Scots: A Pathway to Social and Economic Inclusion Project which was funded by the Asylum Migration Integration Fund (AMIF) and delivered in three phases from October 2020 to December 2023. Here we focus on the third and final phase of the research conducted in 2023 while drawing on learning from Phase 1 (see Baillot et al., 2022) and from Phase 2 (Vidal and Palombo, 2022). More in-depth information is also available in our academic publications (see Käkelä et al., 2023; Vera Espinoza et al., 2023) and our interim reports. The three phases of the project and their respective aims are represented in the Timeline at figure 1. The ABM3 New Scots: Pathways to Social and Economic Inclusion Project is a partnership between researchers based at Queen Margaret University’s Institute for Global Health and Development and three third sector organisations who deliver specialist services: Scottish Refugee Council (integration planning), Workers’ Educational Association (English language assessment and learning) and Bridges Programmes (employability support). These practice partners have engaged with the research team to facilitate data collection, interpret findings and share mutual learning. The research component of the ABM3 project has explored the following research questions: 1. What is the role of social connections in refugees’ pathways to social and economic inclusion? 2. What meaning(s) do refugees ascribe to connections at different stages in their pathways? Building on our learning over the first two phases of the project, and to support our partners to adapt to the needs of their growing and changing client group,1 in the third phase we have focused in on the role of time and place in building social connections towards economic and social inclusion. The research team’s objectives for the project extension period were therefore to: • Explore how time and place impact the social connections that support specific means and markers of integration, including housing and employability; • Analyse the role of place in facilitating social connections between more recently arrived refugee people and more established residents in Scottish Local Authority (LA) areas; and • Discuss the contribution of AMIF partners to participants’ integration journeys. Names used in this report are all pseudonyms, to protect the identity and confidentiality of our participants.
‘Step by step’: the role of social connections in reunited refugee families’ navigation of statutory systems
(Informa UK Limited, 2023-01-25) Baillot, Helen; Kerlaff, Leyla; Dakessian, Arek; Strang, Alison
For asylum route refugees, the existence and persistence of structural barriers to navigating statutory systems are well-documented. Even when initial barriers are overcome, further transitions may disrupt refugees’ lives. One such is the arrival in the UK of family members from whom they had been separated during their flight from persecution. This paper draws upon data gathered using a Social Connections Mapping Tool methodology with reunited refugee families to make three contributions to the field of refugee studies. Firstly, families’ accounts of navigating statutory systems confirm the multi-directionality of integration. Refugees’ efforts to build and leverage social links proceed differentially across key statutory domains and cannot alone overcome systems barriers that require adaptation on the part of public services. Secondly, our findings contribute to scholarship that critiques the division of social relationships into categories of bonds, bridges and links, and the distinctions made between these based on ethnicity or nationality. Rather, refugees’ social relationships are more appropriately understood as a fluid continuum, with their nature and purpose subject to change. Finally, refugee families’ descriptions of settling in the UK highlight the influence of time on integration and the importance to refugees of re-building independence in a new country context.